Turned on WSAZ this evening for the first time in a few weeks being in the tri-state and could not help but notice a few things.....

*The story about the shooting near Peebles, OH end with a plea about the safety of the children prior to video freezing.

*The story about a shooting in Dunbar lacked any additional information than the 2 paragraphs on the web but more than a minute about safety of the children. Do we have a meme?

*The story about the accident on I64 just east of the 29th street exit lacked any information as to the location of the accident but the copy posted to the mobile app had adequate detail to know where the accident occured.

*The story about taking paint to Habitat for Humanity ReStore said the event was for EarthDay, yet Tim Irr corrected the story and said that you could take your paint to ReStore anytime.

Next trip through the area, I will definitely make the time to watch WSAZ to see if what I saw tonight was par for the course or if the news team was just suffering from a case of the 'Its almost the weekend' blues.

The first step in a successful revolution is to defeat all competing revolutionaries.

Since WSAZ has so many newscasts and repeats so many of the stories within them,
I think they are continually in the "tease" mode. I have seen them with a breaking story
nobody else has, but will leave out the most basic information till later in the news.
Things like the address of the incident, so you can alter your traffic plans.
They almost never stumble over pronunciation of local names anymore, but spelling
is another matter. The web stories are written as you would expect broadcast copy to
be written and not in depth, since a little more page space costs nothing.

"Everyone Should be aware that you're just a screen grab away from infamy."

The part that was most sad is that the script that was read last night was also the script from the early morning broadcast. I am pleased the stories on the mobile app are of better quality, but you would think Gray would demand better quality from the broadcast. Perhaps all I saw was WSAZ's staff having a case of the Friday-itis, like WCHS in the late 80s and throughout the 90s.

Now that my antenna is better tuned, I will pay attention a little more on my next trip in a few weeks.

The first step in a successful revolution is to defeat all competing revolutionaries.

A month has passed since I made this original post and I have been fortunate to have spent all but one of the those Friday evenings at the KY Compound. So, with that said, my conclusion is that the 11:00 pm broadcast of the WSAZ News on April 22nd was simply an outlier. Stories have been better prepared for production and the fit/feel of the product has been as tight as it should be for the work of a true news leader.

The first step in a successful revolution is to defeat all competing revolutionaries.